Dade County (Miami), Florida

School Impact Fee Study
   

For the Dade County Public School Board, Duncan Associates prepared an impact fee study that addressed critical school overcrowding and used a sliding-scale formula to ease housing affordability. Enrollment in the Dade County public school system, then the fourth largest in the nation, had been increasing at over five percent per year for more than a decade. By the early 1990s, over 40 percent of all its students were in portable units and school overcrowding had become a serious local political issue. Because of the urgency, the County requested that the entire study be completed

in only 120 days. To address housing affordability, fees were based on unit size (bedrooms and square footage, using regression analysis of current housing data from tax records). To determine the demand that new dwelling units place on the classroom, a formula based on a logarithmic regression equation relating to unit size or floor area was used. A range from 500 to 3,800 square feet per unit was selected, and fees yielded by the equation were calculated by charging a “base” fee of $600 per unit, plus 90 cents per square foot. The resulting impact fee ranged from $1,071 for small units (under 500 square feet) to $4,100 for large units (over 3,800 square feet).